


cherry blossom blush.

by sourirs



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Major Illness, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24274597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sourirs/pseuds/sourirs
Summary: He ripped a page from his notebook and wrote the thoughts that had made him cough up the flowers for the very first time.Day 1, after practice, 2nd year,he scribbled, swallowing the lump in his throat.Your blush is the colour of cherry blossoms.
Relationships: Ennoshita Chikara/Tanaka Ryuunosuke
Comments: 23
Kudos: 166





	cherry blossom blush.

**Author's Note:**

> my first HQ fic and I guess its this. This was born out of late night chats with Blu that had me sobbing in my childhood bedroom, moulded into the pain that it is today by the angst boss that is [neroinkboi](https://twitter.com/neroinkboi). Initially I'd only commissioned them to get this angst out my system, but then, they were so talented and the updates were so poignant that I actually felt moved to write something. 
> 
> so here the fuck this is lmao
> 
> [here's a link to the art for this on nero-sans twit!](https://twitter.com/neroinkboi/status/1262821902835314688?s=20) pls rtwt, leave ko-fi, and consider commissioning them bc wow.

Love crept up on Tanaka slowly. Back then when he’d been just shy of getting it, just seconds from realising. It crept on him as slowly as the blush he’d watch blossom on Chika’s cheeks, hours into practice and those brows set firmly. It crept up on him like the way the sun set, slowly turning Chika’s hair from a deep brown to almost black. Made his heart twist like the twitch in his fingers from having to restrain himself from reaching out. Once, twice, a thousand times.

Tanaka realised he was in love with one of his closest friends before his final year was out and in hindsight he should’ve known that burying his feelings would only cause a sick seed to sprout.  
  
He pushed it out of his mind. It wasn’t that he was a bigot. He couldn’t be, not really, his parents were punk rockers, they’d grown up in the alt-scene and ever since he was a kid he’d known that people came in all kinds of different forms, and crucially, people *loved* all kinds of different forms. He just hadn’t ever thought it would be him. Falling in love with a man. It felt wrong to say it like that. He didn’t look at any of his other friends the way he looked at Chikara, he didn’t want to coax smile after smile on their lips. It felt wrong to say it. So it must’ve been a fluke, he told himself. Just a fluke, just a mistake. No need to make a scene, no need to ruin things. Chika was going to be his captain next year, it would cause him stress and Tanaka couldn’t ruin volleyball for the team.   
  
So he overcompensated. He loved Kiyoko-san like he thought love should be, obnoxiously, without shame, almost spitefully to the part of him that let his gaze linger on Chika’s neck when he laughed. He called him bud, pal, mate, friend- And every time he felt the distance between them growing. That should’ve worked. It should have been enough to stop, just *stop* the desperation in his chest. He didn’t need to fall in love with his friend, he didn’t need to step into something terrifying and confusing and- Only it wasn’t. It didn’t work at all. And the more he tried to push it from his mind, the more desperately he wanted Chika, the more he ached to put a hand on his waist, just once, to feel the sheen of his sweet, the way his breath would quicken.   
  
When Chikara cried on court, Tanaka felt the need to wipe his tears, press affirmation of his care into his cheeks with tender kisses, like a freight train. “Listen to me,” Tanaka ached to whisper, “You don’t know how brilliant you are. You don’t need to change. You-” But he didn’t. And it got worse.   
  
That night, the night of that match, the night when they’d celebrated and cheered and Tanaka had let himself press his nose to Chika’s shoulder for just a little too long. That night, he coughed the first petal. Cherry blossom pink, resting innocently in his hand.  
  


* * *

Tanaka had never been conventionally smart. He didn’t have the patience to study, lost himself in daydreams that were sometimes a little too weird to think about again. His creativity was more- startling. Hitting him out of nowhere. The moment, the thought, the idea, it stayed bottled inside him if he couldn’t verbalise it. It was never something important, a vague play for their matches, a half-hearted song lyric, an impulse to run outside and lay in the rain. So he ignored it mostly. And then it would flicker away, light faded.   
It happened once again, when Tanaka was staring in horror at the soft pink petal in the palm of his hand. The thought was startling, shocking. It demanded to be listened to, demanded he give it all his attention. Demanded he do something, anything, about the swell of emotion he was feeling.

He ripped a page from his notebook and wrote the thoughts that had made him cough up the flowers for the very first time.  
  
_Day 1, after practice, 2nd year_ , he scribbled, swallowing the lump in his throat.

_Your blush is the colour of cherry blossoms._

Looking at the page made it easier to handle somehow. There it was, the thing that had made the pain smart. There it was, on the page, and out of his heart. He’d do this, for every thought that had him desperate for Chika, he’d just do this and forget about it the next day.

Tanaka enclosed the petal, folded the letter, and tucked it into the very corner of his drawer, behind the magazines and the broken pencils, and told himself these feelings would go away soon enough and to never tell anyone about them.

* * *

Life went on. It had to. They had games to play, exams to sit, girls to pretend to crush over.

* * *

_Day 48:_

_You grabbed me when I was shirtless today. I had to stop breathing for a second._

_  
  
Day 192:_

_You confronted me about being distant._

_Day 204:_

_Pretending not to love you is hard._

* * *

Tanaka told himself he’d managed to stop caring. He told himself this, over and over, louder and louder, with the blind confidence that had dragged him through his years on the team. He could be Chikara’s friend. He could be a good friend even. He could watch him gain his confidence, give him thumbs up when he almost fell off the ride at the park, he could buy him ice cream and walk him home and watch him under the stars and sit across from him in class and share his lunch and stare as his fingertips brush over petals and somehow not break down- He could do it. He had to do it.  
  
“I’ll put in a good word,” Chikara murmured, one such time. He was leant against the trunk of the tree just outside his house. It was a nice day, enough of a breeze to flit through the strands of his hair, to make his t-shirt flutter, to send the scent of lavender over to Tanaka as he sat on his hands and tried not to reach out.   
  
“For what?”   
  
His voice had no right sounding that ragged.   
  
Chikara looked at him, gaze lazy and comfortable, “With Kiyoko-san. You didn’t want to make me gauge my eyeballs out today, so it’s my turn to be a decent friend-”

A moment to process the curve of Chika’s smile, the pink of his lips, how warm his eyes looked, to remind himself Chika wasn’t flirting, he didn’t like Tanaka like that, that he was joking and waiting for a response. And then Tanaka laughed. Loud. Obnoxiously. Covering the sound of roots growing and growing and growing in his chest.   
  


* * *

_Day 387:_

_I gave you my pudding cup and you smiled._

* * *

A year of this. He’d been doing this for just over a year. The petals never stopped coming, almost daily without fail. But at least, he told himself, at least they were whole flowers, at least he could hide them still, at least he could still see Chikara.  
  
Graduation came and Tanaka had been seconds from confessing at their after party. His heart screamed for it, the roots seemed to come alive, propelling him forward. He’d ask Chika to dance, he wouldn’t hide the way he looked at him. He’d hold his hand, kiss his cheek, tell him he deserved this, deserved Tanaka’s love every day for the rest of his life.   
  
And then Tanaka turned the corner to see him, his closest friend, the boy he’d shared a million thoughts with, the boy he’d stared at a million moons with, the boy he was in love with, pressed a little too close into the arms of someone else, in the arms of Kenji, a captain from another team, who was naturally clever. Easy with his affections, confident as he tucked a strand of Chikara’s hair behind his ear.   
  
Tanaka had barely made it to the bathroom before the coughs wracked his body, and this time it was more than one, so many petals, scrambling to push them into the toilet, to get rid of the evidence.

* * *

_Day 874:_

_I slept with someone and kept thinking of you._

_Day 1018:_

_It’s been months since I last called._

* * *

They saw each other often outside of college. Because Tanaka was sick, twisted in the fucking brain, addicted to being around Chikara and listening to the lull of his voice as he spoke about his own degree.He knew he should stop, but the reminder of how hurt Chika had looked last time he’d tried kept him there. Kept him stuck at Sunday morning coffee meet-ups, watching Chika dump too much sugar in a coffee that didn’t need it, and wondering if his lips would be sweet to kiss.

* * *

_Day 1053_

_My mom sent me our graduation pictures._

_I wish I’d held your hand. Just once._

* * *

Hospital was- an odd place for someone like Tanaka. It was quiet here, subdued in a way that was stifling. There was no distractions here. No boys and girls who deep brown hair, who weren’t the one he wanted but close enough that it almost didn’t matter. No essays, no assignments, no college sports, nothing. Nothing to keep his mind off it.

The doctors kept pushing surgery. Every day, they would stand by his bedside, kick aside the petals by their shoes, and give him information he barely listened to.

His parents came by, after he’d first been admitted. His mother begged him, begged him. “Who could be worth this?” she shouted, the cherry pink blossoms clenched in her hands. Her voice cracked. “Who could be worth all of this, Ryuu?”

And Tanaka thought of a small pink smile, a quiet, beautiful presence, and the stars reflected in Chikara’s eyes.

“I’m sorry.” he whispered.

* * *

_Day 1460:_

_I got an invitation to your wedding today.  
_

* * *

Saeko helped him with his suit.

His hands wouldn’t co-operate. They’d had to bind them, stop them shaking, hide the worst of the blood.

Every step felt wrong. Like he was moving through tar, one step after the other, one step, and another, and-. In each pocket he had tissues, plastic bags, medicine.

He would see Chika at his wedding. Watch him beam the way he was always supposed to. Make sure he was being loved with all the intensity of the stars in the sky. And then he would go to that cold hospital room and have that surgery that would strip Chikara from his mind, that would kill the infection and make him live a mediocre life. So he could look at the moon, so he could look at the cherry blossoms, so he could breathe without the anguish tearing at him.

One last time, he told himself. One last time. Years of this had made him sentimental, Day 1’s note tucked in his wallet, beside the pictures of his family, and the medical card with his information on it, years of this and he still hadn’t learnt how to be anything but unreservedly in love with his childhood friend.

* * *

Chikara was happy, he realised.

Tanaka was frozen, between their friends, frozen- heart- Breaking. Shuddering. Staring at the brightness of Chikara’s smile, the hand on the small of his back, the love in his eyes. Directed away, to the side, to his husband. To his husband. To his-

Chikara was happy. Chikara was in love. Chikara didn’t-

“Dude, are you alright?” The voice, whoever it belonged to, it was hazy. It felt like it was muffled somehow, underwater, like- Oh that’s right. Tanaka was drowning. Tanaka was dying. Because Chikara was happy and in love and married and Tanaka-

Still. Loved him so much.

He didn’t remember collapsing. He’d closed his eyes, the smile on Chika’s face shining a little too brightly for him to handle. And when he opened them there were pale fingers on his cheeks, Chikara’s face swimming in and out of his vision. Oh.   
  
“Ryuu,” Chika choked out. And he was crying. Why was he crying? Tanaka lifted his own hands, angry at the tears on that pretty face, they had no place- He froze, staring at the cherry blossoms on his skin, the petals falling with every movement. “Ryuu,” Chika whispered again, “What’s happening? Why are you this sick? Who-”

Tanaka pressed his thumb to Chika’s trembling lips. He smiled. They were as soft as he dreamt they would be.  
  
“Chika,” Tanaka whispered. The roots around his heart tightened for a moment, choking him, forcing a cough up his lungs. He had Chika’s attention. Finally. He pressed the note to Chika’s chest, delirious. He knew it wasn’t fair, none of this was fair. He’d lived for years like this and yet, he didn’t want Chika to have even a second of this pain. But there was no doubt, Tanaka was- He wasn’t- God, he wasn’t going to make it. Not now, not after seeing the love of his life, happy, married, in love, with someone else. A selfish part of him needed to let Chika know.

That he’d started and never stopped.

He felt Chika’s breath hitch, his hand resting over his chest because it hurt to keep it on his face. He felt his heart beat. He felt so much in those two seconds that years of aching, yearning, didn’t matter. This was worth it. Chika would always be worth it.

"Day one thousand seven hundred an-"

“All this time?” Chika whispered. His eyes were so pretty. They shouldn’t be crying, they should never cry.

“I’m sorry,” Tanaka told him, his voice weak. He felt shaky.

“No, no, n-” Sobbing now. Sobbing and it was his fault, it was all his fault. “No. Answer me, please, Ryuu, answer me, you loved me all this time?”

The shake to his shoulders surprised him, sent pain shuddering through his body.

Tanaka mustered the strength to open his eyes, unaware he’d even closed them, mustered the strength to cup Chikara’s face. Mustered the strength to tell him the truth, even if that truth was nothing but a trembling little nod.

He thought about the wedding he was at, thought about Chikara’s new husband who was probably looking at them in confusion. Thought about holding Chikara’s hand in his dreams. He thought about loving him, and not being able to stop, and sobbing under his shower, jerking with every reminder, drawers filled with thousands of notes, rooms overflowing with petals. He thought about the thousands of ways he wanted to make up for ever making him cry.

And realised that, perhaps, this was the only way he could.

“I’m sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> im @ohsue3 on twit and have only just gotten it lmao


End file.
